Rappan Athuk: Reloaded

Product Background

Rappan Athuk: Reloaded is a compilation of Necromancer Games' previous Rappan Athuk d20 system modules, combined with some new material, all in a boxed set (388 pages total, spread out in 3 booklets). It's priced at a staggering $75, apparently because it's a limited edition product, with only 1000 copies being printed, each numbered and signed by the heads of Necromancer Games.

There was some controversy about this. Firstly because it was originally meant to be competitively priced hardback ($40-ish, given the page count), with a decent sized print run. That would have been my first choice as a consumer, then changed to a limited edition, high priced boxed set.

Secondly, the head of Necromancer stated that Amazon.com would not be getting any copies (relevant because Amazon.com offered an insanely low pre-order price of $22, based on the original planned price). However, that not only turned out to be false, in that they did get some copies and honored that pre-order price, they've been offering copies of it well after the initial pre-order period, albeit for a somewhat higher price ($47).

Some feel this was an honest mistake, others feel it was merely a ruse to get more people to pre-order direct from White Wolf/Necromancer themselves. Who knows? All I know, is I was convinced not to pre-order from Amazon.com, but did end up getting one there (#200) at the higher price. So I still got a pretty good deal, but not nearly as good a deal as if I had preordered at the cheap price.

Thirdly, while this is available in PDF form, the price of the PDF is quite high - $50 or so, higher than the Amazon.com price for the print product. (When I started this review, they still have copies. I dunno if that is still the case)

I think the whole mess has left some fans somewhat irked at Necromancer. Myself included. I really wasn't sure to include a mention of this, because it's not meant to be a soapbox sort of thing, but I figured I better, as something of a disclaimer. I still think I'm being objective, but people almost always think they are being objective. Just like everyone thinks they are a good driver.

The Product Itself...

Rappan Athuk is designed to be something of a killer dungeon. Not the largest, perhaps not even the deadliest, but it's called the "Dungeon of Graves". Not because it's run by Peter Graves, but because of its lethality. Apparently from the notes, it was the megadungeon in the game of one of the heads of Necromancer games, and is about 25 years old, and has killed about 500 player characters in that timespan.

It's basically set in a mountain, and is about 15 levels in size. More actually, because some levels have multiple sections. It's not a linear or completely horizontal, but vertical, and there are difference entrances and exits to various levels. So to a certain extent, players can explore it in various different manners, and come and go (rather different than the other megadungeon on the market for d20, the World's Largest Dungeon).

The backstory is fairly simple - basically a group of followers of Orcus (the demon-god of Death) lost a war vs the armies of good, and fled. They found a hollowed out mountain (apparently old volcano) and set up shop. And thus Rappan Athuk was born. (No explanation for the name itself, though).

As such, much of the dungeon is filled with worshippers of Orcus, or various minions of his.

You get 3 books with this. One big book, which describes the 15 levels. One smaller book, which contains stats for the monsters and NPCs in the dungeon. And one small book, which contains the maps of the dungeon.

The Dungeon: Levels One through Five

Level 1: The Lair of the Dung Beast (4 pages)

The main entrance (sorta) for RA. This for lower level PCs, but has a couple complications. First off, the Dung Beast, which is a mimic who often poses as a toilet. He's basically unkillable. Also a bunch of wererats. Kind of a dull level, unless you like toilet humor. 4 pages

Level 1a: The Temple of the Final Sacrement (6 pages)

This is another entrance to Rappun Athuk, but is somewhat hidden, and generally for mid level (10 and above) parties. This is a more interesting level, in that there are various tests and puzzles the parties must past to get through it. 6 pages

Level 2: Marthek's Place & Ambro's Base (5 pages)

This is a short level. Marthek is a crazy barbarian, Ambro is a stupid ogre.

Level 3: Beware of Purple Worms (6 pages)

As you might guess, this is full of purple worms. But also rats and umber hulks. And a Rakshasa. No Richard Simmons, though.

Level 3a: The Well - Zelkor's Lair (7 pages)

This level is the home of Zelkor, a spectre of a wizard.

Level 3b: Down the Well (11 pages)

This level is for very high level character (18+), and is the home of the Ravager, a rather nasty sort of critter which is nigh on unbeatable. Basically, the PCs shouldn't go here because they will almost certainly get killed.

Level 4: The Upper Temple of Orcus (6 pages)

This is the 1st of 3 Orcus temples in the place. As you might guess, it's full of Orcus's followers, as well as Max, a "surprisingly intelligent" Otyugh. Meant for 10th level or so characters.

Level 4a: The Upper Caverns (5 pages)

Not much here, pretty cavern-ish stuff - fungus, goblins, basilisks. Toughest bit are a vampire and his girlfriend.

Levels 5 through 10

Level 5: Banth's Lair & the Wight Catacombs (6 pages)

Banth is an evil wizard, who does experiments on dead critters. He's been given protection by Orcus, thus the wights and zombies around the places. He is the first of two evil wizards to have an apprentice who is not evil, but a slave.

Level 6: The Maze (6 pages)

This is obviously a maze, and houses a couple interesting locations.

Level 6a: Caves & Caverns - The Lair of the Spider Queen (5 pages)

More caves and cave stuff. The Spider Queen here is actually just a human wizardress.

There's a Who reference here - a spider named Boris.

Level 7: The Gates of Hell (7 pages)

If the PCs want to take out Orcus, they have to go to here. This is the first step on the path. There's actually a 3 headed dog guarding the place, but also some Mind Flayers

Level 7a: The Hall of Kazleth, the Phase Mintaur King (3 pages)

Has a nasty Minotaur and his crew - they can phase in and out. Also some goblins and a tomb

Level 8: Caves & Caverns - The Tomb of the Evil King (5 pages)

More cave stuff. Some scorpions and a Beholder. Some more goblins, and the evil King himself, who is undead. The backstory for him is a bit confusing, because it makes reference to a living Halfling in Bard's Gate, but that seems too recent to me.

Level 8a: Tomb of the Beacon (9 pages)

Now this is one of the levels in the dungeon that is really different. The Beacon in the title is a magical artifact which is housed here, along with the remains of its former owner, who was entrapped on this level by the forces of evil that built the dungeon. (Finding the artifact is easy enough, but freeing it is another matter).

What makes it different, is that it's inhabited by a colony of Flumphs. Flumphs have been called the most useless (or maybe most pointless?) monster ever. They are sort of floating jellyfish. However, their use here is quite clever, and goes a long way to show they aren't useless. Just weird.

Also on the level is an Beholder and a Roper, which are at odds with the Flumphs.

Level 9 - The Lower Temple of Orcus (4 pages)

The 2nd temple of the big O in this dungeon. Fairly standard, but has a few twists like a maze and a pack of displacer beasts.

Level 9a - Caves & Caverns - The Hydra's Lair (7 pages)

While pretty much self explanatory, besides the hydra, there's a bunch of other interesting places, like a tomb and a gate.

Level 9b - The Well of Agamemnon, Upper Level (5 pages)

No, it's not THE Agamemmnon, it's a different one. This one is a wizard (although sometimes in the text called a sorcerer), not a tragic Greek king. There's sort of a Greek link to him, his girlfriend was a priestess of Hecate, who got turned into a statue.

Level 9c - The Well of Agamemnon, Lower Level (5 pages)

This is where Agamemmnon actually hangs out. He's a vampire now, so he apparently doesn't do much but stay in his crypt (Oh yeah, I know if I were an immensely powerful immortal sorcerer), that's what I'd do)

Level 9d - The Bloodways (21 pages)

By far the biggest level of the dungeon. This actually has no map, it's everchanging, so the PC's passage through it is handled by a flow chart. This section I liked for the most part, and seems to be the most "1e"-ish part of the whole complex.

Levels 10-15

Level 10 - The Lava Pit (5 pages)

Kinda like where Dylan and the gang from 90210 hung out. Except instead of them, Salamanders. (When I started this review, that reference was almost timely)

Level 10a - The Great Cavern (10 pages)

Lots of stuff here, including an Arch-Lich. No Veronica or Betty, though.

Level 10b - The Goblin Outpost (5 pages)

Here be Goblins.

Level 10c - The Talons of Orcus (8 pages)

This is a temple of Orcus. Full of Goblins and such.

Level 11: The Waterfall and Akbeth's Grave (6 pages)

This is one of the interesting parts of the dungeon. It seems that it's the resting place of a priestess of Hecate, the evil Greek Goddess of magic and witches (I think I dated a relatives of hers once). She was turned into stone for offending the big H.

Level 12 The Slave Pits (10 pages)

Goblins and their prisoners/slaves.

Level 12a - Grezneck (or, The Goblin City and the Hall of the Titan Cyclops) (14 pages)

I hope you aren't sick of goblins yet, because there's a city of Orcus worshipping goblins here. Apparently the PCs are supposed to befriend these goblins somehow, and use this city as a base of operations. Although this seems only plausible for evil characters, because these are not just poor misunderstood goblins, they are evil ones, ones that keep slaves, worship Orcus and all that.

Level 13 - The Portal of Darkness (4 pages)

If the PCs want to battle Orcus himself, they have to go to this level to enter a portal to take them to Level 15, where he awaits.

Level 13a - The Goblin Barracks (4 pages)

Whee! Even more Goblins.

Level 14 - The Chapel of Orcus (4 pages)

This is the 3rd temple of Orcus in the dungeon. It's pretty small.

There is a portal here that go to the first large Necromancer Games dungeon, Tomb of Abysthor (also a much better dungeon).

Level 15 - The Den of the Master (3 pages)

This is the lair of Orcus himself. Or at least his "Avatar" (I hate that "Avatar" stuff, way too 2nd edition in feel). At any rate, he's pretty tough. In theory, he's supposed to be beatable, if the PCs have destroyed his 3 temples in the dungeon, because his stats aren't as high. Even then, it seems unlikely that 20th level characters could. Epic would be more of a match.

Final Thoughts (I really need a catchier name for the last part of the review)

I think it suffers from a lot of problems. Both the dungeon itself, and the product form.

First off, the dungeon doesn't have a lot of variety. 3 levels are basically the same thing, temples to Orcus. Oh sure, the specifics are different. But not that different - same basic mix of baddies. Even some of the NPCs are basically the same. Like two different NPCs forced to be apprentices to evil bad guy wizards.

To be honest, this has to be one of the most boring dungeons I have ever come across. It has some interesting bits, but a lot of it is just the same stuff over and over and over. There's basically 1 good medium sized dungeon worth of material in this, combined with 2, maybe 3 samed sized deadly dull dungeons.

I literally fell asleep once while trying to write this review, something I have never done before. (I don't think I've ever fallen asleep in a chair before!). I was planning on doing a longer review, akin to my one for the World's Largest Dungeon, but I just couldn't, it was just so dull.

Secondly, it's not the easiest to use in a game. It's fairly high level (probably 10th minimum) and the PCs have to make the trek to it, where there are a number of fairly high level beasties. I really cannot see many players wanting to do this. Unless they are masochists. I mean, there are people who like being whipped, or even play GURPs. So it's possible.

I mean, I can understand wanting to do difficult dungeons. Like the Tomb of Horrors or Neverland Ranch or that Dragon Lich module Goodman put out. But while those are like playing Russian Roulette, this is more like playing Russian Roulette with a Gatling Gun.

Maybe it's more fun a dungeon if it's played. But finding no takers, I can't really judge that aspect.

Lastly, the product form is less than ideal. Having the entire dungeon in one rather stiffly bound, perfect bound, softcover book, makes it very hard to use. Unless you want to break the spine, you can't lay it open on a table, which is really a must. Thankfully the maps are in another book, so you don't have to photocopy them. But honestly, that's much less a problem than a book that won't stay open. The PDF could have been an handy option, except it's also priced so high.

I also think that the main dungeon book seems "padded" by the format they chose to use. By having something like 32 different chapters for the dungeon, you end up with well, almost 32 pages of white space when you consider the chapter header and the last page which is usually not close to being full. The outer margin isn't exactly small, either. While it's not exactly a new thing for Necromancer books to be padded like that, in most of those, the price of the product wasn't nearly so high.

Ultimately, this is really only a product for collector's, I think. While parts of the dungeon are certainly usable, I think most people looking for an adventure will not find this product terribly appealing.

Deadly, yes, so DMs wanting to kill PCs might like it. But for the life of me, I cannot imagine that playing in it for more than a few sessions would be much fun. Too deadly without much in the way of reward, and far too repetitive, dull, and static.

From what I've read of the action 1st edition (and earlier) dungeons of Gygax, and Arneson and company, the designers of Rappan Athuk have completely missed the point. It's far too static and not nearly mysterious enough. And definitely quite different from how I played AD&D when it first came out.

So, under normal circumstances, I would give this product a 2/5. But since it's incredibly expensive in terms of what you get, I'm knocking it down another point to 1. I mean, seriously, is a 388 page product really worth $75? No. Comparably sized boxed sets go for $50 or so, and if it were a book, it would probably be $45-ish.

And seriously, I've been trying to get rid of it since about a week after I got it, but haven't been able to find anyone who is willing to offer anything worthwhile (No, I'm not trading it for 3 Fast Forward books). So I must not be alone in thinking it's been overpriced.